opened on a mystery,
revealing another world in London, and another sort of life than ours.
It is as uncanny as if we had sensed another dimension of space. The
tram gets among the buildings again, and we are reassured by the
confined and arid life we know. But what a light and width had that
surprising world where we saw a barge drifting as leisurely as though
the narrow limits which we call reality were there unknown!

But after dark there is not only no River, when you stand where by day
is its foreshore; there is no London. Then, looking out from
Limehouse, you might be the only surviving memory of a city that has
vanished. You might be solitary among the unsubstantial shades, for
about you are only comets passing through space, and inscrutable
shapes; your neighbours are Cassiopeia and the Great Bear.

But where was our barge, the _Lizzie_? I became aware abruptly of the
skipper of this ship for our midnight voyage among the stars. He had
his coat-collar raised. The _Lizzie_, he said, was now free of the
mud, and he was going to push off. Sitting on a bollard, and pulling
out his tobacco-pouch, he said he hadn't had her out before. Sorry
he'd got to do it now. She was a bitch. She bucked her other man
overboard three days ago. They hadn't found him yet. They found her
down by Gallions Reach. Jack Jones was the other chap. Old Rarzo they
called him. Took more than a little to give him that colour. But he
was All Right. They were going to give a benefit concert for his wife
and kids. Jack's brother was going to sing; good as Harry Lauder, he
is.

Below us a swirl of water broke into mirth, instantly suppressed. We
could see the _Lizzie_ now. The ripples slipped round her to the tune
of they-'avn't-found-'im-yet, they-'avn't-found-'im-yet-they 'avn't.
The skipper and crew rose, fumbling at his feet for a rope. There did
not seem to be much of the _Lizzie_. She was but a little raft to
drift out on those tides which move among the stars. "Now's your
chance," said her crew, and I took it, on all fours. The last remnant
of London was then pushed from us with a pole. We were launched on
night, which had begun its ebb towards morning.

The punt sidled away obliquely for mid-stream. I stood at one end of
it. The figure of Charon could be seen at the other, of long
acquaintance with this passage, using his sweep with the indifference
of habitude. Perhaps it was not Charon. Yet there was some